


The Thing About Youth Culture

by LayALioness



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Social Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 11:24:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6655954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy doesn’t mean to start a Clarke Griffin appreciation side blog.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thing About Youth Culture

**Author's Note:**

> for Abby

Bellamy doesn’t mean to start a Clarke Griffin appreciation side blog.

It stats out mostly as a joke; he sees her getting a lot more hate mail than usual, and wants to cheer her up—partly because he can’t stand the thought of her being upset about some dumb strangers on the internet, and partly because he honestly can’t understand why anyone would hate _Clarke_. It’s all fandom stuff, of course, because she drew some fanart for the MCU, and people clearly have nothing better to do than to harass others about shipping, whatever that means.

Bellamy’s had his Tumblr for a while, and for the most part he really likes the site. He likes being able to geek out about history as much as he wants, and have people he doesn’t even know, actually _enjoy_ it. He gets a fair amount of messages a day from high schoolers working on class projects, who need help sourcing a fact or who are trying to come up with a thesis and need help, and it makes him feel good knowing that he can maybe get some fifteen year old to love history as much as he does.

Plus, there are memes. Bellamy really likes memes.

But Clarke’s also a lot more into the fandom stuff than he is, and sometimes does stuff on commission, or just for fun, that end up getting trash talked by assholes in her inbox, who hate T’challa/Bucky, or whatever it is that she’s drawn. And each time, it pisses Bellamy off, because she doesn’t even _have_ to be sharing her talent with these people, doesn’t even _have_ to have a blog, but she does it because she loves art, and she loves making art for others, and honestly Bellamy’s just sort of annoyed every time someone doesn’t appreciate Clarke as much as she deserves.

So, he makes a Clarke Griffin Appreciation post, because she’s his best friend, and he wants to make her laugh. He knows she follows him, has ever since she started working with him at the school. She’s the librarian, instead of the art teacher, and when he asked why she just shrugged and said that “art is what I do when the rest of the world doesn’t make sense.” He didn’t pretend to understand it, but he did let it go. Besides, she likes books, and helping the kids find books, and she started an afterschool book club that focuses on getting girls into sci fi, so he’s pretty sure she likes her job just fine.

The original post is simple enough.

CLARKE GRIFFIN APPRECIATION POST

  * Is an exceptional artist.
  * Science Fiction super fan.
  * Works daily with teenage boys, and _hasn’t_ murdered any.
  * Once cried about the Library of Alexandria.
  * Is very cute.



She sees it soon enough, reblogs with the comment “thanks bell! ur the best <3” and honestly that would have been the end of it.

But then she starts to text him whenever she’s drunk.

Bellamy’s gone drinking with Clarke once or twice—like the night she cried about the Library of Alexandria—so he knows she gets overly affectionate, offering compliments to random strangers, and playing a lot with his hair. But then Clarke starts drinking with her housemates, whom Bellamy’s met a few times and likes well enough, and his phone starts to go off.

_did u know i love ur freckles_

Bellamy stares at the text for a moment, grinning in spite of himself. _You may have mentioned it once or twice, yeah._

_well i do. u have great freckles_

_As opposed to just mediocre freckles?_

_hey some people have not great freckles. or no freckles at all and just MOLES bellamy. i only have moles, so count urself lucky_

_I like your moles._

_and i like ur freckles so now were even. and also ur hair_

_My hair?_

_u have really nice hair. and nice everything else. good job_

It’s the sort of thing that, were it anyone else, Bellamy would consider it to be some sort of drunken flirting. But it’s _Clarke_ , the same Clarke who once got drunk and tried to crawl over the bar, because she thought the bartender looked lonely. She probably just drank some wine coolers at home and didn’t have anyone else to focus her affection on, and so decided to text some compliments to her best friend. Bellamy is pointedly _not_ going to read into it.

He finds her at work the next day, with her head on her hand, like she’s propping herself up.

“Late night?” he grins, and she scowls up at him, tossing her holiday Kleenex box at his face. “Do you remember texting me?”

She groans, and he grins even wider, fishing out his phone to show her. She’d sent him a few more after the one about his hair, each more erratic and typo-filled than the last. Clarke scrolls through them and bites back a yawn, looking still squinty from sleep, and adorable.

“I can’t believe I didn’t compliment you on your abs,” she says once she’s finished, and Bellamy shrugs, taking back his phone.

“Maybe next time,” he jokes, and he doesn’t actually _mean_ it, but then it happens.

It’s late on a Saturday, and he’s answering some college kid’s question about the Roman occupation of Great Britain, when the little chat box pops up.

Bellamy still hasn’t really gotten the hang of the chat thing; the little bubble at the top says he has 48 unanswered messages, that he can’t seem to get to and will probably never see. Clarke’s really the only one he ever chats with, and that’s just because she’s persistent.

_did u know theres some guy who had sex with a dolphin and wrote a book about it?_

_No, why on earth would I know that?_

_u have an endless amount of obscure facts in ur brain i don’t bother assuming what u do or don’t know anymore_

_Well, I can safely say that “dolphin porn book” is not a category of facts that I previously knew about._

_expand ur horizens bella. my. ur welcome_

_On a scale of one to ten, how drunk are you?_

_no coment. ur abs are ver y nice btw. see? i keep my promises_  
also ur hands.  
als o ur super smart  
nERD

_Drink water before you pass out._

He makes the second appreciation post that night, because he’s filled with fondness for his best friend, and also maybe because he’s more than a little in love with her, and if she can’t know _that_ , then she should at least know that she’s loved.

CLARKE GRIFFIN APPRECIATION POST PART TWO

  * Knows about dolphin porn books.
  * Compliments friends while drunk.
  * Is still very cute.



He gets the first message soon after, just someone asking if Clarke’s his girlfriend, which makes sense, since Bellamy doesn’t really talk about his personal life on the blog all that much. He’d probably think Clarke was his girlfriend too, if he didn’t know better.

He answers _No, she’s just some librarian_ , and tags her because he knows she’ll reblog it with some obscure reaction gif.

She does, and he reblogs it in turn, and then it _catches on fire_. Within a day, the post has a hundred notes, from all their followers commenting “Cute!!!” or “imagine your OTP.”

One of them says “I ship it,” and Bellamy may not be as into the whole fandom thing as Clarke is, but he’s learned a few things by proxy, so he knows what that means.

But, it’s just a bunch of kids on the internet, right? How bad could it be? Sure, it’s a little weird knowing so many strangers, probably more than a few of them underage, are invested in his love life. Especially his love life with _Clarke_.

But it’ll blow over soon, probably. Nothing stays very relevant on the internet for long, and it’s still contained within their bubble of followers, and they’ll probably all lose interest soon.

But then Clarke _keeps_ texting him while she’s drunk, and they get more and more affectionate, and _sweet_ , honestly. She _adores_ him, and he knew she did of course, just like she knows he adores her, but. It’s different, waking up to things like _ur my favorite in the universe._

_Favorite what?_

_favorite everything_

And they make him smile like an idiot for the rest of the day, he saves each and every one of them, but they also make him _ache_ because—he’s so fucking in love with her, and this is only making it all worse.

He makes a few more appreciation posts, because she draws some Modern AU Kylo Ren and gets shit for it, and because they’re a better alternative to him showing up on her doorstep with a boombox, to profess his love.

The posts start exploding, every time, because apparently their followers have not forgotten or moved on. There seems to be a small fanbase involved, and it’s starting to freak Bellamy out a little, because _he_ doesn’t mind, not really, but what if Clarke does? What if Clarke _realizes_ what the posts really mean? That he’s been in love with her for months, pining away like some asshole without telling her?

So he stops mentioning her on his blog, stops answering questions about her, and moves back to all-history-all-the-time. Which he’s sure means his followers think they went through a bad breakup or something, since they were all so convinced he and Clarke were secretly dating.

But she’s still _there_ , still a warm presence at his side during the faculty meetings, or wrapping her arms around him at the local bar when they all go out, or texting him weird facts about volcanoes, or complimenting his _glasses_.

_ur a great teacher, u know? u really care about the kids and the books and everything. they’re gonna learn so much from u_

Bellamy blinks at his screen, and _fuck_ , he loves her, and it isn’t fucking fair that she can do this, that she can be so perfect and _earnest_ , and he still can’t tell her the truth.

And he needs an outlet, a place to vent about how much he’s in love with his best friend. He’d usually go to Octavia, if he needed to rant, but lately her advice leans more towards _ask her out or get over it_ , and then she spends the next twenty minutes aggressively worrying about his future happiness, and he just isn’t really in the mood.

Normally, this would be the sort of thing a blog is for, but he’s never gotten very personal with his blog and anyway Clarke follows him, so he’s not about to start _now_.

But he knows people have secondary blogs, devoted to different things, and honestly that sounds sort of perfect.

Maybe it’s a little weird, having a side blog dedicated to his unrequited love, but. Whatever, it’s the internet, and apparently a man once had sex with a dolphin, so at least Bellamy’s clearing that bar.

He doesn’t put any effort into the side blog, not like he does his main. He barely even makes a title for it—I’M AN IDIOT—before he just starts ranting, word vomit all over the page.

He posts it before he can chicken out, doesn’t bother tagging it or anything, and fully expects it to go unseen by anyone.

Except it doesn’t. Bellamy isn’t sure who goes around, searching for long winded posts about people hopelessly in love with their best friends, but apparently some people do, and he wakes up with a dozen messages from well-meaning strangers, offering him their condolences, or telling him to go for it.

It’s sweet, once he gets over the surprise of it all, and it definitely makes him feel better about his whole situation in general.

So he’s in love with his best friend. Lots of people are, apparently. He’ll get over it. She doesn’t love him back, not in the same way, which is _perfectly fine_. He’ll move on eventually, or she will, which will in turn make it easier for _him_ to move on. Either way, he’ll survive.

But that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with her messages, or the way her hair always smells like sunflowers, or the way she lights up because she’s happy to see him, or the way she sticks her feet in his lap when they watch TV, and yells at the screen whenever Jeopardy!’s on.

So the word-vomit posts become a regular thing, and increasingly more common, because Clarke starts _coming over_ to get drunk, which is infinitely worse than just drunk texting him.

For one, she shows up looking perfect in a sundress, with a bottle of some sort of alcohol, while Bellamy looks gross in a pair of boxers and his glasses.

“Uh,” he says, because honestly all other words have tipped and fallen out of his head.

Meanwhile, Clarke goes pink all over, and practically shoves the bottle into his chest. “I thought you might want to be my drinking buddy.”

“I’m always your drinking buddy,” he points out, but he steps aside so she can walk in, and studies the bottle. It’s moonshine, apparently, and apple pie flavored, which sounds disgusting, but he’ll try anything once.

“That’s why I thought you’d say yes,” Clarke says, like it’s obvious.

“Okay, well, let me go, uh, get dressed,” he starts awkwardly towards the bedroom.

“You don’t have to,” she teases, and he _knows_ she’s teasing, _knows_ she doesn’t mean it, but his neck turns red anyway and his stomach does a stupid flip because it refuses to listen to his brain.

“I really do,” he says, and leaves to pull on jeans and a t-shirt before coming back. Clarke’s fetched the shot glasses from his kitchen, and is curled up on his couch like she belongs there.

They take shots until the room’s spinning, and Bellamy switches on _The Twilight Zone_ because it freaks them both out just a little, and Clarke ends up nestled into his side, like she always does.

“You always smell good,” she muses, sleepy, and settles in even further against him, like she’s melting. “Like all the best things.”

Bellamy’s carding his hand through her hair, and he isn’t sure when he started doing it, but it feels nice and she’s humming, so he’s not about to _stop_. “So do you,” he offers. “Like sunshine flowers.”

Clarke laughs, moving, so he can feel the wet of her mouth against the skin of his neck. “I’m glad that I know you, Bellamy Blake.” She curls her hand into his shirt, like she’s afraid he might try to leave. Like she thinks it would somehow be possible for him to move, when she’s pressed so close.

“I’m glad I know you too, Clarke Griffin.” But she’s asleep by the time he says it.

_She fell asleep on me last night, and I don’t know how much longer I can handle this. She feels so good, she’s so perfect it fucking hurts. Even when she’s being an idiot and burning milk on the stove because she forgot about it, she’s perfect. She isn’t in love with me and that’s okay I swear it’s okay, but god, I wish she was. The other day she showed up to work in a dress and it wasn’t even an inappropriate one but I still almost walked into the bookshelves. I woke up with her this morning and fuck, I want to do that every day. I just wanted to roll over and hold her._

It’s not the longest rant he’s ever posted, or even the most pathetic, but it’s the one that starts trending.

Bellamy thinks about just deleting the blog altogether because, what if she sees it? Or what if someone else they know sees it and puts two and two together? But it’s incredibly vague, reads more like an abstract poem than anything else, and anyway what are the odds, right?

That night one of his followers sends him the url link and says “Is this you, about Clarke?” and Bellamy nearly dies.

If he answers it, even to say no, Clarke might see the link too. She might not realize it’s about her, but even if he was vague in _that_ posts, he wasn’t so careful with the others. Some of them are definitely obvious. Some of them might even have her actual _name_.

So Bellamy deletes the message, and he thinks that’s the end of it, because he is entirely too optimistic.

Clarke shows up at his door, but this time she doesn’t have a bottle.

She’s dressed haphazardly, in a pair of pink camouflage sweatpants and a tank top, hair thrown messily back in a bun, face washed and pink from the spring night air, and Bellamy loves her.

“Hey, what’s up?” He’s dressed this time, thank God, and moves to let her in.

Clarke opens and closes her mouth a few times, and then just shakes her head, pulling out her phone. She unlocks it and flashes him the screen.

It’s her Tumblr inbox, and there’s an anon message saying _Did you see this?_ with a link. Bellamy doesn’t have to click it, to know what it must be.

But Clarke clicks it anyway and—yep, there’s his side blog. Dozens and dozens of posts about how crazy he is for her, about how he can’t fucking handle her texts or her smile or the victory dance that she does whenever she wins trivia night, or her fucking _breasts_.

Clarke Griffin has probably read the posts that he made about her breasts, and he wants to die, just lay down and die in the middle of his living room.

“Oh,” he says, which is possibly the stupidest fucking response he could have given. “Um, yeah, that—that’s nothing. Honestly, um.”

Clarke just reaches up a hand and covers his mouth with it, which seems for the best, given how much he wants to throw up right now. But then she pulls out a piece of paper from her back pocket, a sheet torn out of a spiral notebook, folded up into a square. She unfolds it, clears her throat, and reads.

“’Bellamy Blake appreciation post. One, is the king of all nerds. Two, is my best friend. Three, has also cried about the Library of Alexandria—‘”

“You started that, I’m a sympathy crier,” Bellamy argues, and Clarke shushes him.

“’Four, makes a _side blog about how much he’s in love with me_ ,’” she pauses, glancing up at him, and her cheeks are going pink, along with her shoulders and her chest and Bellamy hasn’t risked looking down, but he’s sure it’s spreading across the rest of her. “At least, I hope it’s about me. I am the only librarian you know, I’m pretty sure.”

“There’s Muriel, at the Civics Center,” Bellamy says, mouth dry, and Clarke laughs.

“Sorry, are you in love with Muriel?” She’s smiling now, bright and happy and so hopeful it makes his teeth ache, because—this can’t be a joke. She wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t be looking like this unless she loved him too.

“God, no, she’s like my grandmother,” Bellamy says, and kisses her.

He means it to be a chaste kiss, just to make sure they’re on the same page, but Clarke seems to have a better idea, curling her hand through his hair and holding him to her. She lets out a breath and a soft little noise into his mouth, and Bellamy groans, licking into her until she’s mewling, moving up against him, and shaking in his hands.

He pulls away, nosing at her cheek, and Clarke grins, nipping at his chin. “You smell good,” he tells her, pressing his mouth to her hair. “Like all the best things.”

“You didn’t let me finish my list,” Clarke says, but she doesn’t pull back, just moves her hand in between them so she can see her paper. “’Five, will hopefully be my boyfriend.’” She looks back at him, and he grins, impossibly wide, so he thinks he might burst with it.

Bellamy leans to graze his mouth against her. “That sounds like a good start.”

When Bellamy wakes up with Clarke Griffin stretched out across him in bed, making soft little kitten snores, hair a mess, with marks up and down her neck and chest and shoulders, from his mouth, he wishes he could somehow get a message to November 2015 him, and let him know that the cute librarian he had a crush on, was actually the love of his life. To let him know that sometimes, he does get the happy ending.

Clarke posts her BELLAMY BLAKE APPRECIATION POST, because “It’s about time people know it goes both ways. Including you, dork.” She changes the last bullet point to _Is my boyfriend_ , and adds _Really good at oral_.

“You know our followers ship us, right?” Bellamy asks, watching her type from over her shoulder. He leans in to press a kiss to her jaw, because he can do that now. He knows that eventually the novelty of it will wear off, but until then he plans to keep putting his mouth all over every inch of her. “They’re going to go nuts.”

“Oh yeah, we have a tag on Ao3,” Clarke chirps, and Bellamy eyes her suspiciously.

“Clarke have you been reading fanfiction about us?”

“No comment,” she says, and waggles her eyebrows at him.

Bellamy rounds the couch, and she scooches forward, so he can sit with her in his lap, as he puts on some documentary about Icelandic volcanoes she’d mentioned.

Within moments, someone sends Clarke a message, asking who Bellamy is. She answers _just some history teacher_ , and then tags it with a heart.

“I feel like you’re sending some mixed signals,” Bellamy muses, and Clarke turns around so she can kiss him, wet and dirty. “Okay,” he breathes out, when she pulls back, looking more smug than he’s ever seen her. “Pretty sure I get the message.”

“Only _pretty sure_?” Clarke asks, all faux innocence as she moves her computer to the coffee table, and Bellamy helps her straddle his thighs. “Then I guess I should keep going until you’re positive.”

They’re both grinning, making it hard to properly kiss, but Bellamy can’t find it in himself to care.

That night, he sees someone has reblogged that post again, which he has since edited, to let everyone know that the girl of his dreams thinks he’s an idiot, but an idiot worth dating, and that his life is awesome.

They tagged it _#relationship goals_ , and Bellamy has to agree.

He glances over at where Clarke’s in his bathroom, wearing nothing but a pair of cute underwear that he’s probably going to take off with his teeth. “Can you believe neither of us realized we were into each other?”

Clarke makes a face at him. “I really don’t get it. I was hitting on you for _months_! What do you think all those texts were about?”

Bellamy frowns. “I thought you were just being a good friend. Wait, so you don’t really like my freckles?”

Clarke laughs, crossing over, so she can flop on the bed next to him. Bellamy rolls over to press his face against her chest. “I love your freckles,” she says, quiet, scraping her nails against his scalp.

“And I love these,” Bellamy smacks a kiss to each breast, and she laughs, squirming as he moves on top of her, framing her face with his arms. “I love you.”

“I know,” Clarke grins, smoothing her hands up his back. “You made, like, a hundred vague posts about it. You’re such a drama queen.”

“How was I supposed to know?”

“I said you were _my favorite everything_ , Bellamy, how much clearer could I have been? Besides cornering you at work after school, and giving you a blow job.”

Bellamy chokes on absolutely nothing. “Is that still an option?”

Clarke gives a wicked grin. “I don’t know, do you think you could be quiet this time? I don’t want any students walking in on us.”

Bellamy makes a face. “How obnoxious do you think they’d be, if they found out we were dating?”

Clarke gives her best attempt at a shrug, lying down. “About the same amount as our followers. Maybe some of them _are_ our followers,” she muses, and Bellamy stares down at her in horror, until she laughs.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she placates, leaning up to kiss the corner of his mouth. “And if it isn’t, we’re on the same page now. We’ll figure it out.”

Bellamy smiles like he always does when she reminds him that this hasn’t been just a one way street. She loves him too, has been pining just as much, albeit less dramatically. “Yeah,” he agrees, leaning down. “We’ve got this.”


End file.
